In the fields of controlling electrical consumer loads user interface devices like switches or dimmers are used to adjust an amount of an electrical power provided from an electrical power source to an electrical consumer load. The electrical consumer load might be a lamp in a lighting system including a plurality of different lamps, an electrical motor in a home appliance like a kneading machine or in a vacuum cleaner or an electrical heater. In the easiest case the switch is a hard switch for merely switching on/off the power supply to the electrical consumer load. In an on state, the maximum available electrical power is supplied to the electrical consumer load and in the off state, no electrical power is supplied to the electrical consumer load. User interface devices or soft switches like dimmers can be applied to continuously adjust the electrical power supply to the electrical consumer load. Such dimmers have become popular in controlling light appliances.
Light systems are one of the most important ambience makers. People use light appliances to create different ambiences for different moods or activities. Research has shown that people also like to use colored light to further enhance those ambiences. Therefore, light appliances include a full color light sources to enable people to create these ambiences.
Further advanced light appliances are flexible and integrated. Such light systems comprise multiple full color light sources, variable color temperature light sources and ‘normal’ functional light sources. In some cases such light systems further interact with other electrical consumer loads like a HIFI-device, an electrical heater or an air-conditioner to further enhance the ambience generation. In other words, modern light systems do not only comprise a conventional illumination function but also ambience creation functions for influencing the mood in a room. At the beginning, these functions where merely applied in professional environments in offices and shops. However, this kind of ambience creation becomes more and more popular to average users.
Since these advanced light systems include a plurality of different lamps and in particular multiple full color light sources and/or variable color temperature light sources, the control of such advanced light appliance is very complex. A user interface device for controlling the light system requires a unique switch for each of the ambience creation function. This results not only in a huge space requirement for the overall light controller but makes the user interface device also difficult to use for average users. These discussed disadvantages are also valid for other electrical consumer loads to be controlled by a switch, like a plurality of indoor units of air conditioners in a house.
WO 2007/072315 proposes to interconnect a user interface and a light source to be electrically controlled by the user interface with an electronic controller. The electronic controller receives an instruction from the user interface and adjusts the electrical power at the light source based on the user instruction.
However, the application of conventional control devices for controlling an electrical consumer load is getting more complex or unmanageable with an increasing of the complexity of the overall system. This makes it difficult to use conventional control devices especially for the average user.
With the different possibilities and functions of such light systems, different and new types of controls are required. Next to on/off and dimming, one can envision controls for pre-set selection, color setting, daylight ambience, and so on. However such control functions are quite complex and the user is not aware which setting represents a desired characteristic of the light system. The user can only try several control functions until he arrives at the desired one. However, the feedback via the light system is very inconvenient.